School takes on ancient scourges

By PETER J. HOTEZ |
March 3, 2015
| Updated: August 20, 2011 4:04pm

Dr. Peter Hotez is dean of the new school of tropical medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine. (Cody Duty / Houston Chronicle )

Austin, Houston and San Antonio, three of the most populated cities in Texas, have something in common with the world's great population centers - Cairo, Jerusalem, Petra, Baghdad, Shiraz, Delhi, Kathmandu, Chongqing, Wuhan and Shanghai. All are located on or close to the 30th parallel north. All, to some degree, are home to people in poverty.

Texas Children's Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine are determined to make a difference in the lives of 100 million people in these cities, and indeed all of the "bottom billion" - the world's 1.4 billion poorest people - by fighting the diseases that help trap them in poverty, including hookworm, elephantiasis, river blindness, schistosomiasis, leprosy, leishmaniasis and Chagas disease. To that end, we are establishing Baylor College of Medicine's fourth school, the National School of Tropical Medicine, and moving the Sabin Vaccine Laboratories to the Feigin Center at Texas Children's Hospital. Together the Houston-based school and vaccine research institute will be the first of their kind in the United States exclusively devoted to combating the neglected tropical infections that have sapped the strength of working men and women and damaged the brains of their children since the earliest recorded time.

Since 2006, a group of concerned scientists in the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases has worked with the U.S. Congress, as well as the Bush and Obama administrations, to support the delivery of packages of essential medicines that simultaneously treat several tropical infections. As a result, today more than 100 million people are receiving urgently needed treatments that will someday lead to the elimination of elephantiasis, river blindness and blinding trachoma.

For many other tropical infections, existing treatments do not work and we need new vaccines and drug treatments. However, because these diseases largely affect people who have no money, most major pharmaceutical companies cannot invest in programs for tropical infections. Instead, the scientists joining our new school and transplanted vaccine laboratories will develop, manufacture and test new "anti-poverty" vaccines for these diseases in an effort to break a vicious cycle of poverty and disease. We expect at least two vaccines to enter into clinical trials in South America in the coming year. In anticipation of the need to produce these vaccines, we are linking our Houston infrastructure to a rapidly growing vaccine manufacturing capability now coming online at Texas A&M University. Together, we hope to collaborate further on making vaccines for U.S. public health emergencies and biodefense.

Many people are surprised to learn that some of the highest rates of tropical infections such as Chagas disease, leishmaniasis, cysticercosis and dengue occur in Texas, the result of poverty and not immigration. The new National School of Tropical Medicine will specifically address these tropical infections by educating a new generation of physicians, nurses and other health care providers about their importance as major diseases of the heart and brain that trap Texans in poverty. They will be part of an army that is armed with information to combat these problems.

While the neglected infections of poverty have plagued people since biblical times, it does not have to be this way. This new enterprise in tropical medicine will harness the extraordinary medical and scientific horsepower of the great Texas Medical Center and apply it to solving global health problems, but especially the ancient and biblical scourges that affect the world's poorest people across the 30th parallel and beyond.

Hotez is founding dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and is the president of the Sabin Vaccine Institute and holds the Texas Children's Hospital Endowed Chair in Tropical Pediatrics.